


escalations of touch

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five times they touched. and then another time they touched.</p>
            </blockquote>





	escalations of touch

**Author's Note:**

> indebted forever to snowy for ruining my life. obviously.

one.

 

The first time they touch is not an accident. At least not for one of them. Christa reaches up to brush Ymir’s hair from her face, to staunch the flow of blood over her brow. Sparring gone out of hand, but the wound isn’t too bad.

Ymir flinches away, almost unnoticeable, a clench of skin a millimeter of space. But Christa notices, pauses a hair’s breadth over her skin, before settling her fingers against her cheek. There’s a strange unwinding in them both. Ymir’s eyes flutter shut, her shoulders drop and she goes...calm. Like a clenched muscle suddenly relaxed. And Christa feels it too, as the moment passes, can feel the absence of angry fingers around her wrist, the absence of irritated voices.

She finishes wiping the blood away, and Ymir sighs, opens her eyes. There’s a smile, barely there. But Christa smiles back.

 

two.

 

Ymir liked it.

It feels like such a strange thought to have over fingers brushing her cheek. Too much thought about a touch carelessly given. They’ve touched since; Ymir’s kept count. Christa reaching for hand after a thunderclap. A foot bump at night when she was sleeping. Another bandaged cut three days ago.

She hates that there’s a remnant to it, like a ghost leaving a chill on the palm of her hand. Christa’s palms and fingers are rougher than she expects, smaller than she expects, more than she expects. It shouldn’t leave such an imprint, shouldn’t make her feel suddenly grounded, suddenly here.

It’s just a hand.

But at dinner their thighs press up against each other, and Ymir reaches under the table and links their hands together. She doesn’t look at her, resolutely stares at Connie as he tells some story, but she can feel Christa’s eyes on her, feel the way her fingers clench around her knuckles. Best -- or worst -- the way her thumb rubs over them, slowly, like she’s feeling out the scars, like she’s sussing out Ymir and it’s hard not to turn around, not to try for more.

 

three.

 

Christa’s not sure she understands.

She does -- she understands holding hands, and wanting to hold hands and holding each other and touching. She doesn’t understand how she’s suddenly stumbled onto a touchstone, onto solid ground, onto this silent agreement. Onto Ymir’s hand brushing hers during training, lingering touches at the dinner table, bodies so close as they drift off to sleep, and tangled around one another when they wake.

It feels safe. It feels like home and trust and a laying down of her burdens. Ymir doesn’t want anything but Christa, isn’t interested in the extraneous, when she puts her forehead on her shoulder in the morning she isn’t angling for anything.

At first she feels like she needs excuses. The thunder was really loud, that boom was terrifying, you have something on your face Ymir I’m just wiping it away.

But tonight they crawled into bed and Ymir sighed and took hold of her wrist and pulled her across the distance between them. She’d sighed again when her arms came around her and her chin settled just over her head, like a weight was lifted. She was still frozen, back ramrod straight, eyes wide in the dark.

“Go to sleep, Christa.” Ymir burrows further under the covers, until they’re eye to eye, longer legs tangled with her short ones. There’s a tremor in her hand when she puts it over Christa’s cheek, yanks it away like she’s touched fire.

And she likes this too, more than likes it, the way their bodies fold over one another, compliment each other, blaze pathlines against one another. It’s -- they fit, their bodies fit, and it feels so good to have her so close, to press her nose against her shoulder, to hear the way her breathing evens out, slows as she falls into sleep. As she trusts her to sleep next to her.

Now that she has it, she needs it, needs the sound of Ymir, the soft hiccups in breath, the sound of her as she shifts on the pillow.

“Okay,” she says, and reaches for the hand Ymir pulled away.

 

four.

 

There’s a pattern. Or it feels like a pattern.

She slips into it and tries hard not to think too much about it, how much she trusts Christa, how much she wants Christa, how much she loves her. How following asleep with her heartbeat so close makes her feel like there’s a home for the first time in this nightmare. Like she can lay down her burdens, like she can care and not be punished for caring. Like the nightmare is not all there is to her life. There’s a steadiness in reaching for Christa’s hand at dinner, and standing close enough to her in the roll call line to feel her fingertips brush over her knuckles. There’s a knowing and she likes this knowing more than she’d care to admit.

This is not part of the pattern.

Her fingers press into the dirt of the empty sparring yard and she doesn’t lean back from Christa, but it’s...close. Christa’s face is red, her hands are braced over her thighs, her hair is stuck to the sweaty sides of her face.

They were sparring -- sparring because it’s an excuse to touch during the day without being asked why, without being questioned. This is theirs and its private and Ymir doesnt want to share it, doesn’t want it under scrutiny. And there’s no one here, to watch this moment unfold, to watch Christa’s face get redder, to watch Ymir try to work through the two second brush of her mouth against Christa’s.

It takes her a moment -- an almost too long moment -- to realize Christa is moving to stand, and she grabs the straps over her shirt and pulls her back and shuts her mind off, makes its quiet rising panic hush and presses her mouth back to hers.

It’s -- it’s not the pattern but its  like fire, Christa’s hands twisting around the fabric of her collar, settling against her, pressing against her like she doesn’t need air, doesn’t want air, just her. Just Christa and Ymir and their arms around each other and their noses bumping, and it’s messy and weird but god it’s the two of them together, lonely but together, with one another.

And they’ve been doing this, right? Filling up each other’s silences with secrets and breathless confessions, trusting one another with the building blocks to this. And it’s hard to part when the dinner bell rings, but they do, and Ymir drops her head on Christa’s shoulder. Drops it and breathes and Christa slips her hand under chin and presses her forehead to hers.

  
  


five.

 

This was inevitable.  
It sounds like resignation but it isn’t. It’s only that every moment since that afternoon in the sparring yard has been leading here, lead them here, had them careen towards this moment from the very start. Every moment has been a heady rush of more more more, a dizzying litany, a pushing of limits, revealing more skin, touching more places, kissing more more more. It’s Ymir’s breath harsh in her ear, her hips against hers, her back braced against the wall. It’s Ymir’s hands steady as she undoes the straps and buckles, and then the buttons on her shirt. It’s been the slow reveal of the curve of her hip, and the scar on her thigh, and the strangled sound she makes when Christa kisses her just below her ear. Everything has pushed them to this, the way their voices fall over one another, hushed behind the locked door, the way Ymir kisses her now, sure like she knows exactly what she’s doing, like she wasn’t fumbling months ago.

It’s the breathing she remembers after, more than anything, the way its laced with words, the way Ymir presses her palm against the floor just beside her ear. The way her breathing stutters after Christa says three words, the way she kisses her, soft and sweet and slow.

 

five plus one.

 

It’s a strange thing Chirsta likes to do, but Ymir lets her do it, lets her button up her shirt, and smooth down the collar, after. She likes it, likes being taken care of, likes the tangible feel of these moments, the way Christa looks serene. Happy. She’s just fixing her up, but she likes doing it and that’s -- it’s different.

And she likes it , too, when Christa catches her eye, the way she can feel the corners of her mouth lifting into a smile. The way Christa sees it and tugs on her collar until they’re eye to eye and presses a kiss to her forehead. Because dressing after, pulling herself together after, it could be wiping everything away, it makes it look like nohting happened. But then there’s the heat of Christa’s hands on her chest as she survey’s her work and it becomes enshrining it.

It becomes a lingering.

And Ymir cherishes that.

 


End file.
